Whether it's dangerous or useful to answer pings from the Internet is a
matter of some debate amongst those who work with network security
professionally.  Not answering is very little protection theoretically, but
in practice there are a few threats that will bypass anybody who doesn't
answer a ping.  So one can argue that there is a case for not answering.

  Because your router does NAT, the results you see from Shields Up pretty
much refer to the *router* itself, and not to your PC.  While I generally
like Zone Alarm, that would run on your PC and so I would not expect it to
change these results in any meaningful way.

David Gillett


On 22 Oct 2003 at 16:30, Mike Williams wrote:

> I am new to broadband and have a question.
>
> I have a new Belkin 4 port cable/dsl gateway router for use with a cable
> internet connection. I have 2 computers connected to the router.  The
> computers use WinXP, one home and one pro.  The router employs
> Network Address Translation (thus only one IP address) and has an
> SPI firewall.
>
> I did the tests at Steve Gibson's Shields Up site and got these results:
>     File Sharing: passed
>     Common Ports:  failed the "ping" test (my computer answered)
>     All Service Ports:  Of the 1056 ports, one port was open and was
>                                  identified as "printer/spooler".
>
> Now my question: Are these failures something I need to fix, and if so,
> would I need to add Zone Alarm or some other software fix?
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Mike Williams
>
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